The Project Post-Mortem: A Valuable Tool for Continuous Improvement

Now that the team is finalizing its steps to deliver the complete project to the client, there is still one of the most important remaining parts of the project before it disbands. This is called the post-mortem analysis of the project. For most people, the name post mortem often sounds like forbidding. For most people, they prefer calling it as a project retrospective. While you may call it whatever you want, it simply refers to the description of events that took place in the project. Project post mortem gives the team of employees a chance to reflect on the overall project as well as talking about what could be done better during the next project or what went wrong to be corrected next time.

For those who love continuous improvement, post-mortems (https://www.pagerduty.com/features/post-mortems/) are a perfect tool. Post mortems are often conducted at the end of the project. However, they are also useful at the end of every point of the multi-phased projects. The project development agility is used to develop a brief post mortem at the end of the short phases of completion. This action is used to sprint or improves the chances of succeeding in the next project phases.

It takes a certain amount of trust to get an honest post-mortem among the project team members. For this reason, you will need to work for the entire remaining part of the project to be sure that you understand the concerns of the people as well as how to make them feel that they own the project for better results at the end.

Steps for Holding a Successful Post-Mortem

1. Be sure that you list the project post mortem analysis as a task in the plan of the project. When reviewing the project plans with the necessary teams at the conclusion of the project, you must be sure to explain the role of the post mortem analyses for everyone to understand.
2. You should also work to understand and reflect on the outcomes of a successful post mortem analysis as well as working backward to planning the initial meeting. You should also see who is to be included or invited. Also consider the engagement rules as well as the results you expect from the project post-mortem analysis.
3. You can decide to guide the people on how to answer the questions that arise from the project. These questions, in most cases, refer to the different project phases or some topic areas that include planning, communication, user feedback, and vendor management. If you read such questions, you will get participants develop a structure that will help them figure out the possible solutions to the issues affecting their project work.
4. If it is possible, you can try to engage a scribe or a facilitator. This provides a neutral presence for the large projects so that everyone remains in a cool footing.

In the end, consider sharing the learned lessons with the company management. This sharing helps project managers work to attain a better project management job as well as avoiding miss steps and successes.